It seems that more and more often we’re experiencing series suffering from cancellation crunch (or what feels like it). Creators, knowing their time is running short, are forced to scramble to hit the narrative beats of a story, undermining any emotional or structural work those beats might have benefited from.
Hellverine certainly feels to have suffered from just such a crunch. Its second (and final) trade, Hell Hulk Unleashed, tears through its story at a breakneck pace, and in doing so it truncates the action such a riotous story deserves. A sort of MacGuffin chase in which our boy Akihiro must hunt down strategically buried pieces of the book’s titular demon is handled in a handful of pages rather than issues. We’re told that Akihiro bonds with his fellow agents of Project Hellfire (to the point that he considers them a caring family), but we see no evidence of this: these characters have next to no lines of dialogue, let alone chances to prove themselves in the action or narrative.
Marvel
A good deal of Akihiro’s emotional motivation in the book’s final two issues hinges on the sudden appearance of ex-lover and one-time Alpha Flight member Aurora; the two rekindle their friendship over the course of a one-page montage. She becomes a damsel in distress on the next page; she never speaks again.
This crunch is a true shame because the concept of Hellverine is so absolutely ludicrous and promising. It offers up so many interesting chances to play with the metaphysical mythology of the Marvel Universe, building on writer Ben Percy’s familiarity with Ghost Rider’s Hell, but skewing even more 1990s video game. There are technological aspects of Hell that flirt with Doom aesthetics; the gore and horror here feels distinctly heavy metal based.
Because of this, the reader can’t help but yearn to see more from artist Raffaele Ienco, who does more for the book’s world-building with each gruesome new design than the book has space for in its writing.
Hellverine wasn’t long for the world, of course – that ludicrous nature aims for a very distinctive niche of comics fans – but it certainly deserved a little more room to breathe. The book, cut off at issue #10, might have righted some of its wrongs with just two more issues, but the ground covered feels so fertile that it could have been fleshed out to fill another six.
Marvel
Through no fault of its own, Hell Hulk Unleashed feels unfinished and rushed. Its characters feel moveless even as they rush through Hell-threatening conflicts, and while it leaves the team in a safe space for future exploration, it seems unlikely that such an exploration will take place.
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